24 Sessions w/Personal Trainer over 6 Month Period- What's Best and Why?

boltnut55

I've been working w/a personal trainer once a week for 30 minutes through Zoom. At work, I just joined a 6-month program that starts in April where they are giving us a health coach and 24 sessions with a trainer (both are through a third-party vendor)!

I'm keeping my personal trainer during this process. It's helping her, but she's also been great for me (if only I didn't eat so much!). We work out on Wednesday evenings.

I'm thinking of using the trainer provided by my employer on Mondays and Fridays. That way at least I'm working out 3 days a week! But that would only last 3 months. I'm not that motivated to continue on my own. I don't know if there's really a "best" way, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on how you structure this. What would you do and why would you do it that way?

Thanks!

SnifterPug

First I would consider what I wanted to achieve, in fitness terms. For example, my goal for a long time was to be able to do a proper push up, which I now can do. My programs were all geared towards building general strength but the the push up goal firmly in mind. My goal now is to do an unassisted push up. You might want strength gains, you might want cardio gains, whatever. But with 24 trainer sessions you should be able to achieve something quite meaningful rather than just spinning your wheels.

I would discuss my goal with the trainer to work out how best to achieve it, or work towards it if it was a huge goal that might take more than 6 months. (My push up took 2 years, although admittedly most of that was me programming myself not very well. The trainer got me there in 6 months.)

If you are not motivated on your own, maybe you would be more motivated if the trainer wrote you a program to do for homework in between sessions? Then you could check in with the trainer during your sessions and they could tweak the program as you progress.

I work with 2 different trainers but if you do that they both need to be on the same page, or else you use them for different purposes. At present both my trainers are doing similar strength programs with me but as soon as my boxing trainer has been vaccinated we will be going back to pad work/conditioning and I will be doing the strength work with the other guy.